COMPAGNIES D’ORDONNANCE.
Units of the regular French army established in the 15th century. By 1400, independent
mercenary companies had come to dominate warfare. The greatest challenge facing the
Valois monarchs became the need to control their own armed forces, which often ravaged
France in periods of chaos, such as the escourcherie (“slaughter”) of 1435. In the spring
of 1445, Charles VII disbanded as many of these companies as possible and
commissioned a limited number of captains to assemble new commands to be garrisoned
in frontier towns where they were to be regularly paid and supplied. These new
compagnies d’ordonnance were composed of up to a hundred lances fournies, each of
which theoretically represented one man-at-arms, two archers, and three servants as well
as their horses. The key element in the reform was less military than administrative, as
the crown worked through regular musters, inspections, and payments by commissioners,
comptrollers, and treasurers of war to enhance military discipline. The force never
attained its proposed maximum of 12,000 men, ordonnance soldiers often relapsed into
indiscipline, and the companies sometimes proved more loyal to their commanders than
their kings, but they nonetheless represented a dramatic improvement and became the
backbone of royal armies for the next century.
These units of heavily armored cavalry and mounted archers were tactically
conservative even in the 15th century, but their permanent readiness made them the
decisive force in the campaigns of the late Hundred Years’ War. Other princes, such as
the dukes of Brittany and Burgundy, soon imitated the innovation, and the companies
enjoyed rising social and military prestige for the remainder of the century. Appointment
to command or serve in the companies became a key form of princely patronage. Such
service was ultimately restricted to the most privileged echelons of society. After 1500,
the spread of firearms rendered heavy armor useless, and the emergence of modern light-
cavalry and infantry formations ended the tactical preeminence of the companies. The
traditional characterization of the companies as the first standing army in Europe is
perhaps too simplistic, but the significance of the innovation is undeniable. In
regularizing military service as a remunerative career, professionalizing the art of war,
and providing a device for the cooptation of the medieval aristocracy into the disciplined
service of the modern state, they represented a decisive breach with the medieval
traditions of war.
Paul D.Solon
[See also: BRIGAND/BRIGANDAGE; CHARLES VII; WARFARE]
Contamine, Philippe. Guerre, état et société à la fin du moyen âge: études sur les armées des rois
de France 1337–1494. Paris: Mouton, 1972.
——. War in the Middle Ages, trans. Michael Jones. London: Blackwell, 1984.
Solon, Paul. “Valois Military Administration on the Norman Frontier, 1445–1461: A Study in
Medieval Reform.” Speculum 51(1976):91–111.
Vale, Malcolm G.A. War and Chivalry: Warfare and Aristocratic Culture in England, France, and
Burgundy at the End of the Middle Ages. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1981.
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